HJBlog > Google book scans - hands, fingers and all

Wed, Feb 28, 2007, 3:34pm Google book scans — hands, fingers and all

oogle really has an amazing service going with their Google Books. The only thing i'd strongly suggest to them is that they should spend more money to get more competent scans. I have noticed many fingers and even whole hands on scans of some book pages. It happens frequently too, not just once in a long while. I downloaded a bunch of books and about half of them have fingers or hands on at least a few pages. I really think this is a great service, but before they proclaim that all their scans are finished, they should really take a look at their quality control first. They have the cash, and workers who feel underpaid aren't motivated to do a careful job for a very rich company.

Again, this is an amazing service that Google is making available, so I don't mean to slam it for no reason, but they should really cover all aspects of it. The AJAX tool that runs it is great, the PDF downloads are very appreciated, but these scans of appendages are the fly in the ointment.

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Archivist (Fri, February 6th, 2009, 8:48pm UTC)

Thank you for the interesting post and info Jeff, much appreciated. If you prefer a higher quality of book scans, and less fingers popping out at you degrading the authenticity and quality of the scan, then come on over and check us out at The Internet Archive. Where libraries and authors are treated with with the respect and rights they deserve. How many fingers can you find in our 1 Million books? Been here for two years checking them and I have never seen one… Enjoy!

http://www.archive.org/about/about.php
Jeff (Fri, February 6th, 2009, 10:53pm UTC)

Thanks for mentioning. I have long been a big fan of the Internet Archive, and have even been part of a project that contributed to it. You guys do great work there for sure. If any other readers here haven't heard about it, it's an essential resource.